Competing Biographies at Issue in the James Corruption Case

By DAVID KOCIENIEWSKI

Published: July 14, 2007

Through his 20 years as this struggling city's mayor and most vocal booster, Sharpe James has been portrayed as both a protector and a profiteer. Whether he is convicted of the fraud charges filed against him on Thursday, legal experts said, will most likely hinge on which description proves more convincing.

''It's never easy to be a political official accused of charges that amount to personal greed,'' said Alan Zegas, a lawyer who represented Mr. James's chief of staff, Jackie Mattison, when he was convicted in 1997 of taking bribes to help an insurance broker win city contracts. ''But there are a lot of people in Newark who think that Sharpe James is responsible for progress. And if the jurors are of a mind that in order to attract business and development you have to conduct yourself in a certain way, then that's something for the defense to work with.''

Federal prosecutors have accused Mr. James, who left office last year, of misusing his office, saying he billed taxpayers for at least $58,000 in personal travel and entertainment including stays at the Ritz-Carlton in Miami, the rental of a Rolls-Royce and trips to go shopping for a new yacht. They also accused him of illegally helping a female travel companion buy city land at such drastically discounted prices that she quickly resold it for more than $600,000 profit.

Mr. James's lawyer, Raymond M. Brown, has declined to speak publicly about the case. But as details of the investigation became public during the past year, the former mayor and his son John both said that all of those expenditures and land deals were intended to spur redevelopment in the city, and given the extensive paper trail prosecutors have amassed, those arguments are expected to be at the core of his defense.

In a city in which 60 percent of the population is black, the case has already taken on racial overtones. When Mr. James, the city's second black mayor, was released on bail Thursday, he told reporters outside the courthouse that he considered it no coincidence that his indictment was announced on the 40th anniversary of the race riots that battered the city.

''I come out of that history,'' he said, ''a history they can't erase.''

But the federal court where Mr. James's case will be tried draws jurors from across northern New Jersey -- both from Newark, where he remains a popular folk hero, and the largely white suburbs where he is viewed with suspicion -- so legal experts say that any overt appeals to race would be risky. Instead, they predicted a fierce legal battle over the racial make-up of the jury during the jury selection process.

''Race will be the white elephant in the room,'' said Alberto Rivas, a former federal prosecutor who has represented several elected officials since becoming a defense lawyer.

Unlike the previous investigations of Mr. James, which never led to charges because, prosecutors said, Mr. Mattison or other city officials could not be persuaded to testify against the mayor, this case is based largely on an extensive collection of financial records.

The 33-count indictment details hundreds of credit card transactions that prosecutors cite as evidence that Mr. James fraudulently billed taxpayers for lavish personal travel and to entertain eight female companions.

It also refers to an assortment of property records, charging that Mr. James used his office to help one of those women, Tamika Riley, buy city land at prices so far below market value that she quickly resold them for a profit of more than $600,000.

Prosecutors accuse Mr. James of charging $2,976.64 on his city credit card to rent a storage unit where he hid the records of Ms. Riley's land deals.

In a hint at the approach prosecutors might take in court, Anne Milgram, New Jersey's attorney general, lambasted Mr. James by noting that while presiding over a city where a third of the population lives in poverty, ''He wasn't even willing to pay $10 out of his own pocket to buy a movie ticket -- he made the taxpayers do it.''

In his public statements during the past year, Mr. James has said that his actions were responsible for jumpstarting Newark's once-moribund real estate market, and that they were sanctioned by other officials. The land sales were approved by the City Council, he noted, and the credit charges reviewed by the finance office.

But in addition to the documents, grand jurors heard testimony from at least three Newark police officers who accompanied Mr. James on trips and were asked to detail what, if any, city business took place. Prosecutors also elicited testimony from employees in the city development office who reportedly said that Mr. James had personally lobbied for Ms. Riley to receive preferential treatment in purchasing land.

''In the end, every corruption case revolves around the question of the public person and the private person,'' said Kim Guadagno, a former federal corruption prosecutor in Newark who is now running for sheriff in Monmouth County. ''And what you need to do is show is that they can have one arm around a taxpayer's shoulder and the other hand picking his pocket.''

Some legal experts said they were surprised that after federal agents spent three years and hundreds of thousands of dollars on the case, the indictment made mention only of the land deals involving Ms. Riley.

During his final years in office, Mr. James sold hundreds of city lots to friends, business associates and campaign donors at steeply reduced prices, and the city's current mayor, Cory A. Booker, won a court injunction last year to halt many more deals.

In the end, however, the case is likely to revolve around the competing narratives of Mr. James. Cathy Fleming, who defended another former Newark mayor, Kenneth A. Gibson, long after he left office on corruption charges that ended in a hung jury, said that with well-known political figures, it can be hard to find jurors who do not have a preconceived notion of the defendant.

''But at least you want people with an open mind,'' she said.

Photo: Sharpe James leaving the federal courthouse in Newark on Thursday after his indictment on fraud charges. (Photograph by Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times)(pg. B4)